Electrical terminal conductors are used in such modules and serve for making electrical contact with one or a plurality of semiconductor chips of the semiconductor module. In this case, the electrical terminal conductors can be led out of a housing of the semiconductor module. In general, such a terminal conductor is mechanically and electrically conductively connected to a conductor track to which the semiconductor chip with which electrical contact is to be made is also connected. For this purpose, such a conventional terminal conductor can be connected to the conductor track cohesively, for example by soldering, sintering, laser welding or ultrasonic bonding. It is likewise known to plug a terminal conductor into a spring sleeve soldered onto the conductor track. A further known variant consists in inserting a terminal conductor—which has a bent-over base region—into a side wall of a module housing and connecting the base region to the conductor track by means of a bonding wire connection. On the outer side of the module housing, the terminal conductor can have a soldering, pressing, spring or screw terminal.
In the variants in which the terminal conductor is plugged into a spring sleeve, the terminal conductor is embodied as a straight pin, such that the position of the external terminal formed by the pin is predefined by the position of the spring sleeve. This is associated with low flexibility in the choice of suitable positions. Moreover, the method is complicated since a spring sleeve has to be prefabricated by stamping and bending, connected to the conductor track and then equipped with a likewise prefabricated terminal pin.
In other variants, the terminal conductor is embodied as a stamped and bent busbar, which is connected to the conductor track at a base point of the busbar during the production of the module. The position of the base point is defined by the three-dimensional shape formed during stamping and bending. The same correspondingly applies to the outer position of the terminal contacts. In the case of such busbars, the base points generally do not lie above the outer terminal points, but rather laterally offset. The disadvantage of this variant is that different terminal conductors of the semiconductor module generally have different shapes and then also have to be prefabricated in different stamping and bending processes, which is associated with high complexity.
In the variant in which the terminal conductor is inserted into a side wall of the housing and is connected by bonding wire connections, the relevant conductor track has to be led near the side wall of the housing and thus near the edge of the circuit carrier. However, this method requires many different process steps such as, for example, producing a terminal conductor by stamping and bending, inserting the terminal conductor prefabricated in this way into the side wall of the housing, and connecting the inserted terminal conductor by wire bonding.
A further disadvantage common to all the variants is that material waste arises as a result of the stamping processes respectively required.